While originally planned for Phoronix Test Suite 2.0, I have just pushed support for "reference system comparisons" into the Git master repository for the Phoronix Test Suite 1.8 release. This initial implementation makes it possible to easily compare your system's performance results to other reference systems. Of course, quite easily you can already compare your results to others via Phoronix Global, but the reference systems will be broken down into just a few categories -- likely Low, Medium, and High end systems. This feature provides a quick assessment at how your Linux, *BSD, OpenSolaris, or Mac OS X system is performing compared against standard systems.

From the command-line interface the user can run: phoronix-test-suite reference-comparison <saved results identifier>. If that saved results file is made up of tests that support this feature, you will then be prompted to select which reference systems to compare your results to. The reference system names along with their prominent software/hardware is listed. After that, the results with the reference system(s) will merge and will be displayed in your web-browser.

Furthermore, this feature has also been implemented in the GTK2 GUI. Once a test has finished running of a supported test profile, available reference systems are then displayed and the user can check the boxes for which system(s) for comparing their results.

Below is a YouTube video showing the interface (once the testing has started, skip to about 1:50 unless you enjoy watching the terminal).

Within three minutes of running the Phoronix Test Suite, the user can already begin to assess how their system is performing.

All of the pts-core changes to offer this reference system comparison are now in Git. The only test profile to implement this support right now is the encode-ogg test profile. Before the Phoronix Test Suite 1.8 release, more test profiles may be supported with this feature. By Phoronix Test Suite 2.0, a majority -- if not all -- of the test profiles should offer this capability with at least some low, medium, and high end desktops and possibly a few servers. For the OEM vendors on this list, please contact me if you would be interested in submitting hardware for use as reference systems or would be interested in submitting the results, which will prominently be shown to Phoronix Test Suite users in these comparisons.